If your life is not all it could be and you are not lifting weights or pursuing fitness seriously, you're missing out on the most incredible self-improvement tool available.

And no, I'm not even talking about the benefits of muscle or the endorphins.

Developing strength and fitness acts as a catalyst for overall self-improvement. The pursuit of fitness encompasses several profound principles of growth that apply to life in general. You can't help but absorb these principles as you aim to get bigger, stronger, faster, or healthier.

You Can Do Hard Things

Positive affirmations are the most common suggested technique for self-improvement. The issue with affirmations, however, is that they need to be evidence-based. You can't lie to yourself.

If you've been half-assing your career, relationships, and health, you can't exactly wake up on a Tuesday morning and convince yourself that you're hard-working and disciplined.

For affirmations to work, they need to be true. Affirmations can frame aspects of your personality in the best possible light, but these aspects must exist. And if you're showing up to the gym — even if you've just started and have 100 pounds to lose — you'll have a hell of a foundation for evidence-based affirmations.

Every time you get up in the morning and immediately lift heavy weights, you signal to yourself that you’re a badass, disciplined human. A human capable of doing hard things.

When you send these signals frequently enough, you truly start to believe them. You internalize the belief in a way that no affirmation can match.

When you build the belief that you can do hard things, you'll find yourself ready to take on more significant challenges in life. You'll be prepared to put more into your business or your career. Your faith in yourself will compound.

Nothing else can provide you with rock-solid evidence that you can do hard things like getting your ass to the gym in the morning and giving it your best effort.

You Grow To Love Discomfort

Modernity hasn't made us soft, but it's given us the option to be soft.

It is far easier than ever to get by as a human being. Most of us have the constant option of taking the easy path.

Growth needs to involve being uncomfortable; you must stretch your abilities slightly beyond what you're capable of and adapt in the process.

This feeling of stretching beyond your abilities is uncomfortable, but it’s something you have to do to grow. This is the idea of Progressive Overload.

You must gradually increase the amount of work you do in the gym to get stronger. You add a bit more weight, do more reps, and continually increase as you adapt to the changes.

Pushing yourself this way is not comfortable, and it's not supposed to be. But after some years of this process, you'll see that you can do things far beyond what you were capable of when you started.

I've heard elite lifters say that if you're not a little bit scared when you head to the gym, you're probably not training hard enough to grow. Life works in precisely the same way.

If you don’t have an answer, you need to find one. If you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing.

The problem for many of us is that we've learned to dread being uncomfortable because we're just so damn comfortable all the time.

• I can "work" an entire day in my owl onesie while sipping cocoa and listening to Kenny G

• I can order a burrito in less than 10 seconds and watch the burrito's journey to my apartment

• If I spill guacamole on my onesie, I can order another onesie with a swipe of a few pixels, and it will arrive at my door in less than 24 hours

It is entirely too easy to build the habit of getting soft.

But if you make it to the gym regularly and *actually* train hard, you'll grow to love being uncomfortable. You'll crave the feeling of working hard for your goals.

You'll build a habit of yearning for the discomfort, and then you won't even want to eat burritos and listen to Kenny G anymore; you'll get your dopamine from doing hard things.

You Build an Internal Locus Of Control

Your locus of control is the extent to which you believe factors outside of your control affect the outcome of your life.

People with an internal locus of control believe that their actions are the main driver behind the events in their life. An external locus of control is the belief that forces outside of your control have the most impact on your life situation.

It isn't easy to imagine how one could become successful at anything without an internal locus of control. If you don't believe your hard work is going to have a positive influence on your life, then why bother?

Many people have limiting beliefs about their bodies and what they're capable of physically. The common claims are "I just can't lose fat" or "No matter how hard I try, I can't build muscle."

But if these people can commit to a program and put a serious effort in, the results they see can influence their mindset toward their body and their attitude toward life.

Nothing else besides your effort and discipline is involved in changing your body. Nobody can do it for you, and you can’t buy it. It's impossible to get in shape and not develop an internal locus of control as a by-product.

You'll see how you can improve all areas of your life, just as you've done with your body and fitness. Everyone knows logically that they can change their lives drastically, but pursuing the fitness journey will make you believe it.

I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that if you are stuck in a rut, frustrated with your life, and not going to the gym, working on your fitness will be the best thing you can do for your mental health.

You don't have to lift weights like a bodybuilder — there are many options and specialized gyms these days! You don't even have to go to the gym since every fitness influencer now has a billion options for home workouts to sell you (thank you, Corona).

Try it out, and if it doesn't work for you, I'll buy you a burrito—any burrito you want. And yes, you can get guacamole. That is how sure I am that fitness will change your life.